BEES TALK TO OTHERS

Every living organism exchanges feelings, attitudes, ideas, intentions and expectations with other specie fellows by the mean of dialog, non-verbal nods and or behavior etc. These tools when practiced, produces the influence which bring out the change in behavior of individuals around. This type of conversation and communicationmakes the life active and social.

Human is also a social animal, having more complex communication channelswith varying objectives. It is complex because of the use of language along with gesture codes which have close resemblance. Likewise, although in other species of animal, birds and insect, system of communication is not intricate but they can participate in communication. It is limited by nature and related to their ordinary desires.

Some insects like ants, termites and honey bees also possess socialbehavior in nature. They have different ways to convey thecraving information by different modes. Honey bees also use these modes to talk toother bees. From the bee hive some bees go out to supply food materialsconsistingofpollens and nectars to the rest of bees in colony. These bees are called as forager. Some foragers communicatetheir food findings to the other fellow bees for nector and pollen collection. In this way they actually guide their fellows in search of food. The reason that decide the recruiting success is not totally acknowledged but perhaps include evaluations of the worth of pollens and nectars fetched in.

There are different hypotheses about; how the foragers train the other young fellow workers. First, the dance language theory and secondly, the theory of odur plume. Most widely accepted is the dance language theory because it has more realistic support. But some time scientist claim that only dance is principally irrelevant and recruitment relies both on odor and dance.

On returning back to hive, forager bees perform two types of dances. Frist one is known as waggle dance which is perform when food is farther away. Secound one is petite form of waggle dance called as round dance, representating the food origin is nearby. Initially Aristotled in his book “Historia Animalium” described that loaded forager bees dance in circular pattern on the comb, rearly crossing circle in waggle or zig zag pattern.

First time von Frisch (1947)studied the relation of distance and direction of food collected from the hive with runs and turns of dance. He concluded that waggle portion length of run is directly proportion to the distance of food from hive and orientation of dance is relative to the position of the sun. Also, the fast moment is, the better quality and quatity of food. This conversation is actually to teach the rest of forager to find the food direction, distance and quality of food material. On this discovery, von Frisch was awarded the nobel prize in 1973.

When we talk about that behavior of the bees, it may vary the in species to species and race to race. For example in dwarf honeybees this dance is executed on the horizontal portion of the hive. In regard with the dance language, each species has different characteristically. But it is final that this language is present in every community of bees. This way of conversation is unique and possessed by the honey bees only.

von Frisch, K. (1947). The Dances with the Honey Bee: Institute for the Study of Animal Behaviour.